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When billions of dollars are at stake in scientific research, researchers quickly learn that optimism sells. A new study published in Science Translational Medicine offers a window into how hype arises in the interaction between the media and scientific researchers, and how resistant the hype machine is to hard, cold reality. The report's focus is on overly optimistic reporting on potential stem cell therapies. Its findings are discouraging. The study by Timothy Caulfield and Kalina Kamenova of the University of Alberta law school (Caulfield is also on the faculty at the school of public health) found that stem cell researchers often ply...

Related "Stem Cell Research" Articles

When billions of dollars are at stake in scientific research, researchers quickly learn that optimism sells.
A new study published in Science Translational Medicine offers a window into how hype arises in the interaction between the...

Turning 10 years old may not quite mark adolescence for a human child, but for a major government research effort such as California's stem cell program, it's well past middle age.
So it's a little strange to hear C. Randal Mills, the new president and...

Scientists say they have discovered a key factor in the lab formation of human primordial germ cells -- the precursors to egg and sperm -- and that it differs significantly from experiments involving rodent cells.
In a paper published Wednesday in the...

Researchers have identified a new class of lab-engineered stem cells -- cells capable of transforming into nearly all forms of tissue -- and have dubbed them F-class cells because they cluster together in "fuzzy-looking" colonies.
The...

The thorny and unresolved question of whether life itself can be patented may come again before the U.S. Supreme Court, if it accepts a motion filed Friday by Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog. (H/T to David Jensen's California Stem Cell Report.)
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They had each lost slabs of muscle to bomb blasts or other physical traumas, then struggled to regain even partial function of their mangled legs. Some even considered amputation.
After exhausting all conventional treatments, the five men volunteered for...

The governing board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine announced Wednesday that it was appointing C. Randal Mills as the stem cell agency's new president and chief executive officer.
Mills, the former chief executive of Columbia,...

Scientists have replicated one of the most significant accomplishments in stem cell research by creating human embryos that were clones of two men.
The lab-engineered embryos were harvested within days and used to create lines of infinitely reproducing...

The Japanese stem cell scientist who was accused of misconduct by her own research institution apologized Wednesday for making careless mistakes but insisted that her STAP stem cells are real.
Haruko Obokata told reporters at a news conference that she...

If the notion of biting into a hamburger made from lab-cultured stem cells doesn't make your mouth water, perhaps your brain can find it appetizing.
That's the view of two Dutch professors who argue that meat grown in enormous test tubes, or bioreactors,...

There's no good time for a public agency to be embroiled in a conflict-of-interest scandal, but this is an especially delicate time for California's stem cell agency.
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, as the program is known formally,...

California’s stem cell agency announced Wednesday it was taking steps to deal with a “risk of conflict of interest” two days after its former president took a position with a company that the state agency had been funding.
Newark, Calif.-based...

Following months of controversy, editors at the scientific journal Nature have retracted two high-profile studies that purported to demonstrate a quick and simple way of making flexible stem cells without destroying embryos or tinkering with DNA.
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A Japanese scientist who played an instrumental role in two discredited studies about a new type of stem cells hanged himself at his research institute in Kobe, according to media reports there.
Yoshiki Sasai, a deputy director of the RIKEN Center for...

A number of scientists have been grumbling for weeks about a pair of breakthrough stem cell studies that seemed too good to be true. Now one of the senior researchers who worked on the papers agrees that they may be right.
The studies, which were...